


Forty or so Years Ago

by littl_prince



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Death Eaters, First War with Voldemort, Gen, Hogwarts, Minor Original Character(s), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Severus Snape, Young Severus Snape, sxvxrxssnape's Snapetober 2020
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:06:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27326266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littl_prince/pseuds/littl_prince
Summary: A collection of ficlets for Snapetober 2020 (prompts by @sxvxrxssnape on Tumblr).Snippets of various moments from Severus Snape's life from his Hogwarts years to early Death Eater days. The time frame is limited to between 1974 and 1981 — hence the title.
Kudos: 5





	1. Insomnia (Day 1)

“Where would you choose to be?” someone might ask.

And to that, Severus Snape might reply, “Where no one else is.”

And that might be able to explain why the boy was, at this moment, huddled in an armchair in the deepest nook of night, inside a high-ceilinged common room where only the fireplace was attempting to light the place up. The reflection of the flames danced in his eyes, but he wasn’t looking at them. He was curled up, as if he was making room for someone else.

He heard the crackle of the fire, and it filled his ears like no amount of words ever had, and it fuelled him. He clutched a battered old book on his lap, quill hovering over the words he’d just scribbled.

The spell had worked properly today. Though he hadn’t been expecting to use it. He should go to bed.

But Rosier might still be awake — that bastard never slept — and if he was, Severus knew he would be questioned. He’d decided he didn’t like being asked questions. Especially the ones he didn’t know how to answer.

He might as well stay here. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been prepared to stay up the whole night anyway. His left shoulder still felt funny, like he’d dislocated it when he’d fallen. 

He was sure it would be fine.

Tomorrow was Potions. At least, he was pretty sure it was. Written, then practical, then Astronomy at midnight. Maybe he’d actually manage to doze off by then, an exam whose records would follow him around for probably as long as he lived. He really couldn’t afford to mess up Astronomy. Or Potions, for that matter.

He should really go to bed, he thought. But he wasn’t tired. He knew he should be, and maybe he actually was. But he couldn’t feel it; his eyes stung and his legs were sore and his back was aching a little — that was probably from the fall, too — but sleep wasn’t coming.

He knew that the clock on the Gryffindor common room’s wall made ticking sounds. Slytherin’s didn’t, the hands slinking along as if holding knowledge while not alerting you to it. He wished he could hear a sound other than the fire; maybe he would be reminded of time, feel how late it was.

During his very first few months at Hogwarts, he had been afraid of the common room at night. The main reason for that was, of course, the large window to the lake. During the day, the water looked like water, and schools of fish would sometimes pass, teasing the students from the other side of the glass. At night, a pitch black nothingness pressed against the window. Severus would always unintentionally imagine the darkness pushing the window in, the room growing smaller and smaller until the glass shattered, and he was swallowed. _That’s stupid,_ he would tell himself.

Now, he glanced up at the window, and saw something glowing in the dark dart past. The water that didn’t look like water was pressed up relentlessly against the glass still, the darkness seemingly endless. 

Oh, how it would feel to be swallowed.

He had lost track on what he was even supposed to be working on. He looked back down at his book. He squinted a little, irritated by his own handwriting. Wand movements, he remembered.

He had stopped at pointing today. If he made slashing motions — he would have to practice on a pillow for that. He bent over to scribble. It was getting harder and harder to find margins in the book. Maybe he would have to write on a spare bit of parchment from now on.

He realized he was hearing ringing in his ears, and strained to focus on the fire again. Words echoed inside his head, words that he had dreaded, that he had loathed, that had ripped him apart today. _Yesterday,_ he corrected himself.

How was he going to get home this summer? He could owl home, but he knew he would have to find a way to go back himself anyway. Maybe he would stay somewhere else; hadn’t he always dreamed of doing that, when he was younger? But no, he didn’t have enough money for that.

And he knew what he was doing. He was piecing it all back together again. He should be prepared, though, he thought, for some things being lost in the shuffle. Maybe he would never even recall them. And maybe that would be for the best.

And he’d only have to climb one tower now, not two.

And if he went down to the Great Hall the next morning, he would be met with a sea of people who hadn’t felt the ground give out from under them the day before. He couldn’t fathom that. That only he had felt his feet find empty space, had fallen. Maybe he still was falling. And then he would hit the ground, and shatter.

And just this moment, someone might walk through the door to the common room, and Severus’s head would turn, and he would hope an impossible hope. For just one second.

“Where would you choose to be?”

Severus hated questions he didn’t know how to answer. Especially the ones to which the answer was crystal clear.


	2. Poisoned (Day 2)

Every now and then, he’d lay out his outer robes on his four-poster bed, and count the inner pockets. He was now up to nine. He wondered where he should put the tenth.

He had considerably less than that in his Muggle jacket, his humiliatingly big jacket whose sleeves were still too long for him. It was especially embarrassing, seeing as he had only one year left until adulthood, and all of his yearmates seemed to be growing faster than they knew how to deal with. It was a lot of ankles showing and ill-fitting shirts all around, and he supposed he at least felt somewhat included on that front, even though it was the other way around for him. 

He knew some Hufflepuffs had attempted to adjust their robes using magic, and failed spectacularly. After that, no one attempted it. The reasoning was that if Summersby couldn’t do it, no one could, and in any case robe fitting services were probably there for a reason.  _ I could have told them that before the whole fiasco,  _ he had thought. One might have expected them to ask; if anyone would have been desperate enough to try altering clothes before, it would have been him. But then, he’d always flown under the radar. Except when he hadn’t.

Well, he might have no idea how to make his clothes fit snugly, but he did know needlework. That was how he had made all the pockets. And the fabric of the school robes was rather easy to work with, compared to his practice with the jacket.

_ Fig seeds, _ he remembered, and hurriedly grabbed a handful of them, practically dunking them into the cauldron. It fizzed, then evened out, the mixture tinged with dark red now. He stared down at it for a moment, then glanced back at the instructions to make sure he was getting it right.

_ Five minutes, simmer, stir. _

Even a few months back, he would have jumped at the opportunity to be making potions outside of class. Now, he could laugh at himself for that, if only laughter would come.

He suppressed a yawn and looked around at the empty classroom. Slughorn had dropped in a couple of hours earlier, asked him what he was doing. Severus had a shrewd idea that Slughorn knew exactly what he was doing, and that the old walrus wanted no part in it. He supposed he couldn’t fault him for that; the man was a Slytherin for a reason.

“I’m making a potion, sir,” he had said, trying his best not to sound like he was cheeking him. He thought he did a rather good job of that, considering.

“May I ask what kind of potion it is, Mr. Snape?”

“An antidote for Veritaserum, sir.”

Then Slughorn had just nodded a bit, before leaving. He hadn’t even told him to be careful, like he always did before setting his classes on the day’s project. Maybe Severus could have found it in himself to be proud of that, under different circumstances.

Perhaps he was seeing everything twisted, these days.

He had wanted his clothes to fit, that was all. Had that really been too much to ask?

A few weeks back, he had handed his head of House a slip of paper, and something like a shadow had crossed the old man’s face. He really shouldn’t resent him for that; for noticing, and not saying anything to him.

Or for not pointing out Severus’s lie, that a Veritaserum antidote did not need fig seeds — the fruit had been sitting on the cutting board when he had entered.

The five minutes were up, and Severus moved to start stirring, but he sensed something was off. He tried turning down the flames —  _ there, that’s it.  _ He would need to wait for another three minutes that way, then. He didn’t know why even this made him look over his shoulder; it wasn’t as if books had ever been correct.

He could just not eat anymore, he thought after another thirty minutes. He was tired, his mind was slowing to a crawl, and his right arm ached. He switched to stirring with his left hand, grimacing. Would being poisoned be worse than dying of starvation?

Then, he could sneak up to the kitchens at night, when no one would see, and ask the house elves to fix something up for him. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t thought through every other option he might have. But —

_ The Dark Lord always sees. _

He might have laughed at the absurdity of the comment, before he knew exactly how true it was. If nothing else, he knew how to notice eyes following him around. Unlike before, though, he never seemed to be able to run from them.

_ How deep does it go? How far does it reach?  _ He did not know who he could ask. Or if there was anyone who knew the answer to begin with. He supposed all he could do was brew, put vials in all of his pockets, and hope for the best. And he was good at it, there was really no doubt about that. He knew that was what they were trying to see, in any case. The only problem was that he was running out of spaces in his robes to sew the pockets onto.

_ It must be about done now. _ He used the ladle to skim the surface, drop the antidote on the floor. It fizzed and the stone beneath it seemed to burn. It was done. He carefully sealed some of it in a vial, and scooped the remainder into a bottle.

In searching for good ground, he had stumbled into robes that he didn’t know would ever fit. He would grow into them, he supposed. He would prove himself worthy, and then there would come a day when his sleeves did not fall past his fingertips. He might have even felt anticipation for it — had it been another time.


	3. Torture (Day 3)

“Go on, ask,” said Kenneth Mulciber again. “Whatever questions you have.”

The thinner of the two peered at him through a curtain of black hair. His hands were hidden under the table and he had crossed his legs as if to keep them from moving. There was a long silence, and an outsider wouldn’t have been able to tell who was testing whom.

After a long moment, he said, “What tasks are you set, at first?”

“Well,” said Mulciber, as if deliberating, “not much, to be honest. New recruits don’t do much, just attend the more lower-down meetings.”

“What’s considered new?”

“Depends.” The broad-shouldered young man seemed to grimace. “Some who catch the eye of the higher-ups are given heavier tasks, move quickly up the ranks, you know. But that’s a precious few. Most of us are at the tail end for a few years.”

The day was sunny, but the tall, crooked buildings of Knockturn Alley seemed to cast everything in shadow no matter what the weather was like. A group of witches walked by on the road outside, and Mulciber glanced at them before continuing.

“I personally say that that could be better,” he said. “It’s a good amount of time to learn the ways of things.”

Severus Snape could spot a lie coming from the muscly youth from a mile away. He said nothing, and nodded.

“So. What else do you want to know?”

Severus paused. “Have you ever… met the Dark Lord?”

The man sitting across from him tensed visibly. “Just once,” he said, after a moment. “When I first got accepted. He does it himself. Afterwards, I haven’t ever seen him.”

Severus vaguely wondered what ‘getting accepted’ entailed. Mulciber had spoken circles around it a few minutes back, too, when he had been explaining the final steps until the trial period would be over. He wondered if talking of it wasn’t allowed. He didn’t have anyone he could ask, in any case.

_“You’re to talk to me and only me concerning these particular affairs,”_ Mulciber had announced about a week back, with a hint of what Severus recognized as pride in his voice. _“Otherwise it’s considered a transgression. You aren’t to bring it up outside meetings with me until you’re told otherwise.”_

_“I’m your direct recruiter,”_ he had said. Severus wondered if that meant he would be reporting to Mulciber even after he had been ‘accepted’. A part of him sorely hoped he wouldn’t be; the smugness in his voice was getting unbearable.

* * *

A year and ten days later, Severus Snape and Kenneth Mulciber ran into each other in that same alley, and then found themselves sitting in that same corner of the dubious bar.

As always, Mulciber was the one who opened the conversation.

“How are things?” he said.

Severus looked at him. The big Slytherin boy, who had intimidated nearly everyone in his year and below, had all but died. And instead of the pompous arrogance, resentment swam in his grey-blue eyes. Severus thought he might prefer arrogance, now he came to think about it.

“They are well,” he answered shortly. “You?”

“Things are quite good for me, too.”

_Well,_ thought Severus, eyeing the forced smile, _that’s one part of him that hasn’t changed._ If he cared more, or perhaps if he was more cruel, he might tell him to work on that.

“I’m glad,” he said.

“Yes.” Mulciber looked like he was trying to force something back inside. 

Then, in a rush, “Have you ever gotten — tortured?”

Severus blinked. He had heard desperation there, and anger, fear.

“I won’t,” said Mulciber, “I won’t tell. I swear it. Just…”

There was a long silence. And Severus knew the branch had snapped, that they were acknowledging now that their positions had been flipped. Mulciber would not tell. He couldn’t.

“If I’m guessing correctly, you are not about to be punished by one of those in the inner circle.”

He waited until Mulciber had nodded.

“You must know the rule that those outside the inner circle cannot use magic to torture.”

He himself had pondered the reason why, during those rare times when he had had energy left to ponder. Now he knew it was a big part of what drove the whole thing, of what made it what it was. He saw Mulciber nod again.

“You’re wondering what they do, in the absence of magic.”

Magic, he had realized, was a mercy. It was clean and bloodless and it left no mark behind. Perhaps Mulciber did not know how true his lie had been, that staying in the bottom ranks for a while was better. It might have given him time for preparation, the sort that Mulciber was asking for. To at least know what was coming.

So he told him. If he’d been less caring, or perhaps less cruel, he knew he wouldn’t have.

And after another hour of silent drinking, Severus rose from his seat.

“I must go.”

“It must be nice,” said Mulciber suddenly, to his back, “to ride on the coattails of an influential member.”

Severus half-turned towards him.

“Do you think so?” he said, quietly. Then he made his way out of the bar, and the sky outside was dreary and grey.


End file.
